I agree with the principles behind responsive web design, but I think this is a good thing to keep in mind when talking to clients: Timing is everything. For businesses that are trying to turn a profit, their return on investment (ROI) matters. Although mobile is important, it still amounts to a very small percentage of […]

Code Poet just released a free eBook called Getting Pricing Right that interviews Mark Jaquith, Remkus de Vries and Shane Pearlman on setting consulting rates and miscellaneous related topics. It’s short and contains a lot of good advice, as well as links to a lot of resources.

Dan Pink’s talk at RSA presents some really interesting ideas about what really motivates people to work. Contrary to popular opinion among management, mainstream studies reveal that people don’t really care about making more money, as long as they have enough to meet their basic needs. What really drives us is mastering our craft, having autonomy […]

I’ve been tracking projects on a spreadsheet for awhile in order to make sure I’m on time/budget, but I also recently started using a timeline application to help visualize the scheduling, and that’s been a huge improvement. You get a much better picture of what’s going on at any given point when you’re looking at […]

Mike Monteiro and Gabe Levine gave a great presentation for Creative Mornings on the necessity of contracts when doing client work. I never really liked using them because 95% of projects go smoothly and it seems kind of impersonal, but after a recent experience and talking to other developers, I’m beginning to see the need for them, and […]

Lately I’ve been trying to work out a good process for quoting projects and tracking the billable hours and deadlines. I’ve had a couple large projects go over budget/deadline, and I think two of the main reasons are that I wasn’t realistic enough in the quote, and that I just wasn’t being intentional about monitoring […]